Production Line Time

Last night I finished coloring all the copies of the new card that I had at home.  This morning I folded and trimmed them.  You may have noticed that half these cards have figures wearing mostly red, half mostly black.  These represent the first two batches printed, with me doing more cutting between them, eliminating most of the black from the figure. Besides these 6, I had distributed 3 already, and the other 3 copies weren't good enough to be part of the run.  Of the above prints, two were written out this morning and already mailed to friends out of state.  I'll try to write a bunch more tomorrow so that they can go out on Friday.  There are 6 more drying up at the Studio, and I'll color them next week.

I had mentioned a few days ago I'd tell the story behind this one.  I've been doing cards based on fine art pieces for more than two decades, and I usually do a straight copy of a color piece, with slight modifications to give it a winter/seasonal or Christmas theme.  Often the piece relates to something from the past year, such as a something seen in a recent museum show.  Unfortunately I haven't been to a museum lately.  Sometimes I'll just go through books on the shelves, looking or inspiration, but ideas weren't coming easy this year.  Eventually I figured out something I could do.

Back in Carbondale, Professor Michael Onken had exposed me to the work of Lynd Ward, the 20th century wood engraver.  Ward had run across Masereel's woodcut novels and was inspired to do a few of his own, in addition to illustrating other books.  One of the best known of these is his take on Frankenstein, a copy of which I found in the store that sold comics on the Strip in Carbondale.  I regularly have it with me whenever I'm teaching woodcut- workshops, college classes, etc.  Not because I expect those students to copy anything; the woodcut tools just can't match the fine lines of the engravings.  More just to see excellent examples of black and white.  My favorite piece in the book is a full page image of two figures up on a hill overlooking a town, with us looking past them and down into the valley where the town is.  Between Belmar and my brief time as a print professor this fall I was showing this book a lot, which maybe finally put this piece in my mind for this project.  Only problem was that my process calls for a color artwork.  There was an occasion a few years ago when I chose a black and white Masereel print for the card and chose colors of my own to liven it up, so I figured I could do that again.  Rather than just make something up, I based them on the palette of a Bruegel painting set in winter. So two artists I admired worked together to make this year's card.